Department joins WIYN consortium

2016-12-15

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University is pleased to announce that it has joined the WIYN consortium as a temporary partner. The WIYN Observatory is a ground-breaking facility with a 3.5-m diameter aperture telescope atop Kitt Peak National Observatory in southern Arizona near Tucson; the consortium consists of the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the University of Missouri. The observatory implements active optics technology, which actively controls the shape of the primary mirror to keep the telescope focused at all times; its prime location together with this technology earned the facility a reputation for its excellent image quality. The telescope is equipped with a wide range of astronomical instruments, allowing sensitive imaging and spectroscopic observations in optical and near-infrared wavelengths. The primary instruments include an optical imager (One Degree Imager: ODI), a multi-object spectrometer (Hydra), a near-infrared imager (WHIRC: WIYN High-Resolution Infrared Camera), and several Integral Field Units (IFUs) that feed into the WIYN Bench Spectrograph. The Purdue Astrophysics group members will utilize this suite of instruments on WIYN to pursue a range of research topics including the formation and evolution of galaxies, large-scale structure of the universe, and the physics of actively accreting blackholes outside the Milky Way. The Purdue-WIYN agreement will begin in 2017, and last for three years.